Paunchy, in his thirties . . . his light ginger hair would fluff out like a halo when the pellet penetrated his cranial vault through the light bones at the back of his eye socket. She could see it—
Hogg stepped forward and made a quarter turn of his upper body. He planted the butt of his impeller in the pit of Candace’s stomach. Candace fell to his knees, then spewed his dinner on the unscrubbed metal decking.
All around Adele Cinnabar sailors seized Kostroman and Alliance personnel alike, forcing them to their knees at gunpoint with shouted threats. Teams scrambled down the halls in both directions from the entrance alcove. A submachine gun fired, a needlessly long burst that sent bits of pellet and chips from the walls sparkling all the way back into the entrance. Someone screamed curses in a Cinnabar accent.
“Sir, they’ve locked the power room!” a voice cried.
“The bridge is secured!” another voice called.
The Alliance officer’s nametag read STRACHAN in black letters on a gold field. He hadn’t moved except to close his mouth since Adele spoke. Two sailors caught Strachan by the elbows, kicked his knees forward, and began strapping his wrists behind his back with cargo tape. He didn’t resist, but his eyes never left Adele’s.
The vessel shuddered as a heavy door slid to a stop. Daniel returned to the entrance alcove from the left; from the bridge, Adele supposed. “That was the power room containment bulkhead,” he said with a scowl. “There’s no override from the bridge.”
He glanced around. A dozen captives lay on the deck, trussed like hens for market.
Hogg returned from the tender and gave Daniel a thumbs up. “We’ve got an aircar now too, sir,” the servant announced. “We’re coming up in the world.”
Daniel’s usual grin replaced the scowl. “Well,” he said, “we can’t burn through the containment bulkhead even with the plasma cannon, so I guess we’ll have to talk some Kostroman sailors out of the power room.”
“I guess we will,” said Adele Mundy as she pocketed her pistol.
“Look, Leary . . .” Candace said. The gray sheen of his face made him look like a death mask of his normally handsome self. His seat was swiveled to face out from the Attack Console.
Candace rubbed his forehead and went on, “I’m sorry I ever met you! Are you trying to get me killed? First you come to my house, my house for God’s sake! And now you think I’m going to help you and a gang of pirates steal a ship? You must be out of your mind!”
Daniel sighed. He’d thought he could bring Candace around if he took the Kostroman to the bridge. There were no open threats—though Hogg was nearby, trimming his fingernails with a knife as he pretended to watch Adele at one of the bridge consoles. The captured Alliance officers were in the wardroom, nearby but out of sight. All that was happening was that Leary and Candace, friends from different planets, were talking over a mutual problem.
Candace didn’t see it that way. Well, Daniel hadn’t really expected he would; but neither did Daniel see any other practical way of getting the Kostromans in the power room to surrender. Adele was sure that they couldn’t get a message out, but Daniel and his Cinnabar crew couldn’t lift the Princess Cecile with an unknown number of hostile sailors in charge of her power room.
At the moment the vessel was running on standby power from the auxiliary power unit in a bow compartment. The APU’s output wasn’t enough to operate the plasma motors, much less the antimatter conversion system of the High Drive.
“Leary,” Candace said, speaking with the desperate earnestness of a man in fear of his life, “I’m neutral in this, just like I told you before. I don’t wish you any harm, but the Alliance of Free Stars is in power now, there’s no two ways about it.”
Daniel sat on a fold-down jumpseat on one edge of the console. Candace tried to rotate his seat to face away from Daniel. Hogg held the chair where it was.
Candace acted like a kid hiding his head under the blanket to keep the bogeyman from finding him, Daniel thought. Cowardice like that in a man, let alone a fellow naval officer, turned Daniel’s stomach.